The NEA's bitter opposition to charter schools

[futurebeachbum]

From City Journal "We?re All Right-Wing Bastards Now
?that is, if the NEA?s logic is to be believed." highlights the NEA's opposition to anything that negatively impacts the union regardless of its impact on Education.

The NEA fights school vouchers even more fiercely than it opposes charters. In Washington, D.C., where public schools are a national embarrassment?tops in spending, last in achievement?the union set its sights on the Opportunity Scholarship Program. This tiny but successful voucher program gave 1,700 financially strapped parents, mostly poor African-Americans, the opportunity to free their children from horrendous public schools, getting a few thousand of their tax dollars back to help pay the tuition at private schools of their choosing. A number of the 1,700 lucky lottery winners were able to attend Sidwell Friends, the same school that President Obama?s daughters attend.

Here?s what NEA president Dennis Van Roekel wrote to Democratic congressmen last March:

The National Education Association strongly opposes any extension of the District of Columbia private school voucher . . . program. We expect that Members of Congress who support public education, and whom we have supported, will stand firm against any proposal to extend the pilot program. Actions associated with these issues WILL be included in the NEA Legislative Report Card for the 111th Congress.
Vouchers are not real education reform. . . . Opposition to vouchers is a top priority for NEA.​

The article does a nice job of summarizing the conservative and liberal groups that all get lumped into the "Right Wing Bastard Category" for daring to differ with the almighty NEA.

Its time that we took a hard look at our educational system, its goals and the organizations involved in meeting those goals.

 

[scooterbug44]

My opinions on the teacher's unions are well known. :roll:

Found it quite interesting when they specifically mentioned LA schools in the article. I sat next to a teacher on a flight and she had some scathing things to say about the union's interference there. In one instance she VOLUNTEERED to teach a certain class and the union stepped in and blocked it to "protect her" from the school board.